Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer was given a gentle kick up the backside late last year by the company's board, after he failed to move quickly enough against Apple’s iPad and lost market share in the mobile phone and tablet biz.
Despite all that, a Bloomberg Business Week report is suggesting that Redmond is taking its sweet (or …

Tablet OS != Desktop OS

A tablet operating system needs to work with touch screens using big fingers. It also must eek out battery life to beyond a day. Windows 7 - or any 'desktop' OS for that matter - is optimised for mouse input and consumes lots of power.

Even an infinite amount of bluster from Balmer can't change the laws of physics. Microsoft will have to create two completely different operating systems. They may be branded Windows 8, but they will be different in every way.

"Eke"

Substantiate please

Windows 7 as an operating system should be able to be tailored to low power devices with little effort. Currently, from my current tests, a formerly very high end (Qosmio G40 with full HD) notebook can sleep and wake with approximately the same performance as iOS 4.2 on iPad.

Additionally, that same notebook can go 5 days on battery in sleep mode and respond to wake on lan events signifying that the ethernet mac and minimum hardware is still functional. Windows 7 on top of that can run for 2-3 hours while watching a film or playing games.

Now, to speculate. If you were to use an iPad level processor meaning something similar to the A5, had a much lower power screen, added support for all the normal bells and whistles regarding power management in a portable device (hardware and driver support, not OS kernel revamp), standby for the system would be the same as the iPad since standby puts the machine itself into a power off state and only the event generating controllers are functioning during that time. In a powered on functioning state, the same technology which makes speedstep function would allow the tablet to run 5-10 hours.

What is however needed to make Windows 7 function properly for a device like this is :

a) Removal of all non-tablet services. Services for supporting desktop tech should be tossed. Services for supporting legacy emulation should be dumped. Services for supporting WMI should be dumped. Keep it bare. This can be done by disabling services in the control panel.

b) Removal of the classical windows desktop shell. It's not designed well for this, it should only be visible and running when the device is docked, charging and has a keyboard and mouse connected.

c) A tablet desktop instead. This would likely be a modified version of the Windows Phone 7 environment which functions fine already on Windows 7. It's just a .NET app after all.

So, I'd really like to know what it is about Windows 7 which isn't suitable for a tablet. I'm just a lowly operating system system level developer, so these complex topics like what you've mentioned confuse me. I think it's best to leave it up to the experts like yourself. I'll check back for a response, I need to get back to developing the boot loader and real time task scheduler for a new linux device I'm working on.

@CheesyTheClown

"I think it's best to leave it up to the experts like yourself. I'll check back for a response, I need to get back to developing the boot loader and real time task scheduler for a new linux device I'm working on."

Battery size

You'd only really have a fair comparison to an ipad if you were talking of something with a similar physical size, since you can always put in a larger battery to compensate for the higher power draw. I don't know the details of power draw from the chips in either case, but I'd be surprised if the A4/5 in an ipad was using more than a few W (the best estimate I can find is http://eetimes.eu/en/analysis-gives-first-look-inside-apples-a4--processor.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222901800, which has the processor running at ~0.5W), whereas even a mobile-class intel processor is likely to be drawing 10s of W.

Regardless of that, I don't think there's any real reason why a desktop OS can't be modified to work with touchscreens. Apple is already trying to do the same with Lion it seems. The question is whether it's a good idea - do you end up with a compromise which fails for both environments, or something which works well in either environment.

@Cheesy

There's more to an operating system than the kernel and drivers. The API for instance. And security - which in the case of phone-style devices is a hugely significant issue. Sure, it's possible to create a new shell, but that too is only a little part of the overall challenge. Then there's all the tools, applications, software distribution, DRM... If it were that easy MS would have done it.

One of the reasons (as far as I'm concerned) that Apple don't do 'full' multitasking is that the more work that's done, the more power that's drawn. Allowing unfettered access to the full multitasking functionality of a full-size OS such as Windows (or MacOS for that matter) is asking for trouble.

Most developers are rather average and very selfish. Whilst you may be capable, most aren't. Even if most developers are capable, the fact that *some* can screw it up for the others is a good enough reason to question the OS architecture that allows them to create poor code in the first place.

Late

Is this the same company that had a (supposedly) tablet friendly version of their OS all the way since (if I remember correctly) 2002? Then, when nobody wanted them, they were shoving down our throats tablet pcs and touch friendly input. Now, when the world is finally ready for it (or so it seems) - they are taking another 2 years to re-invent the same damn thing they've supposedly been working on for 9 years now. Damn if it makes any sense.

Internal conflict

The problem is nobody apart from the tablet team really gave a toss about tablets. The guy in charge of Office development didn't like tablets and said he preferred mouse and keyboard, so Office wasn't adapted for the tablet OS.

It's that sort of petty internal conflict that makes Microsoft dysfunctional when it comes to moving their offerings along. Only when something similar is out in the wild and raking in megabucks can such people at Microsoft see the merit in something.

When producing something new and ground breaking there is no precedent in the market that says "this will work, this will make money", so nobody at Microsoft will want to cooperate with the team producing it.

Even longer

There was a tablet version of Windows 3.1 in about 1993. Having used one on a long train journey, I quickly realised then that a pen input device was completely inadequate. The user interface then was also poor for exactly the same reason that tablets failed in the early 2000's.

Oh no!

So we will have to waita whole year before we can point and snigger and generally take the piss? That's rubbish!

In any case, what's the point? The OS will be pants; it's Windows, for goodness sake. The hardware MIGHT be ok but because of the MASSIVE amount of resources Windows eats up just to stay alive (I use the term loosely), the battery performance will be rubbish and it will run like a slug. Oh, and it'll crash and burn every hour of course.

I came here just to point at MicroSoft and go

5th to market

So..

Apple has a head start. Android is building, and Msoft is coming in late next year. Sounds as though they are late to the party, and yes they are.

They missed the market with W7 cos they never built any touch into the heart of the OS. The problem is bigger than that, coz they have to carry so much baggage in the kernel and bolt on after bolt on to provide compatibility that the legacy of NT to W7 has made the OS in inefficient behemoth.

smart thinking would have extened W7 for mobiles and built out a replica of iOS / OSX model and seperate the ecosystems (gawd I hate that word)...

They will still insist that the can shoehorn W8 onto every platform under the sun with a confusing array of versions and licence models.

Now, this is still not so clear cut because as someone else has mentioned Business investment in Windows is here to stay for a very long time (business software, legacy apps, the sheer cost to move to anything else is prohibitive on a cost front - spreadsheets alone would make your mind explode at the number of them running core processes across the world today) no matter how much you think it is fixable it is not. In addition to this the synergy of an office PC and an on the go buisness tablet running the same will continue to be attractive for large organisations for support, security (hah) and legacy applications.

Now longer term there are very young people going through education, at home etc, that are learning their basic computing on non windows platforms - my 4 year old figured out the iPad in less than 2 minutes. Over a loooonnng time this will have an effect... so will cloud.

The transition will take years, companies will begin to develop their next versions more platform agnostic to ensure they can run on as many of these devices as possible.

Microsoft can afford to come to this late, and it will take a long time to see any shift. The consumer is irrelevent RIGHT NOW, corporations matter. Corporations are hooked in no matter how much they desire not to be. But today's four year old iPad / Android user is the possible CIO / CEO if the future, and this is where Microsoft is loosing them ... right here right now.

Those four year old CIO/CEOs ...

are already using iPads/AndroiTabs in their enterprises much to the consternation of their IT and Info Security staff .. only of course there would be no general support for staff who would have a real need for Tablets (more than the CEO's Dashboard or Roombi apps).

Oh dear

I've never been a fan of MS's software but WP7 hits all the right notes and looks like it would scale well to tablet sized devices, and more importantly, it's ready now.

If they're really going to ignore the opportunity to ship a touch based OS and all new touch optimised apps in favour of 'proper windows' some time in the distant future then they've really list the plot.

I think you meant ... "they've really pissed the lot"

Tablets Gen 1 has been won by Apple

Time for the other companies to concentrate on bringing something new to the market. After all, pretty much anyone who wanted a tablet has got one, the iPad, a few Archos 101s, Advent Vega from Dixons, Samsungs 7 incher and there are even one or two notion inks out there almost. So, the next battle is gonna be for the next gen. I know I'm not moving on from this ipad until something really sexy comes out, so, windows 8...

Win7 already has nice touch interface (except for the ui - tiny close buttons etc), it has working text and voice recognition built in, they use the ntrig screen (Microsoft partners), pressure sensitive with capacitive finger and stylus friendly (you need a stylus for writing and drawing). Strip down the OS, Office in the cloud, entertainment from the 360 division and bingo, you've got yourself a world class tablet eco system - second generation. One that I would be interested in.

It is a shame that Bill Gates retired, I think MS needs his vision back at the helm, rather like Jobs and Apple. Balmer comes across as a buffoon (I'm sure he's not), but Microsoft really needs a visionary now, more than ever.